TANZ DER GÖTTER

If you can stand some German "partnership" in the vocal department and at the same time share some very good instrumental music à la "Camel", this band might well pleased your ears. To mine hence, the band can only really raise average interest.

Pleasant, guitar-oriented and melodic: there is no doubt about their music. All these features are present, but I can't be blown overall though.

The usual structure of the songs is a short intro followed by a major theme. Almost all instrumental (if you would accept some easily avoidable spoken parts), this album shows some good stuff: mainly great guitar work and crafted rhythmic parts ("Kampf und Vertreibung Part 2").

The band is highly skilled, but the compositions are just average. Well performed though. Anyway, albums as this one were plenty in the glory decade of prog (the seventies, I mean? just in case?).

Symphonic jazz ("Oasis", "Arkana") remind me more and more of "Camel" which is the model by default for sure ("Santana" is not alien to the latter either). Not bad at all actually, but nothing extraordinary either. The closing track has a deep Floyd feel (but again the spoken words are in excess).

The closing number is really good and should please any freak of the great old "Santana": a mix of balanced soft jazz-rock with inspired guitar break (and some added sax in this case).

Three stars: a good symphonic album with definite jazz tints.